


Heart and Home

by WerewolvesAreReal



Series: Shapes and Shards [3]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Character Study, Child Soldiers, Daemons, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Terrorism, Occupation of Bajor, Pre-Series, Starvation, Terok Nor, Terrorism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 11:25:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3445370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WerewolvesAreReal/pseuds/WerewolvesAreReal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Kira was a girl, she wanted a daemon just like her mother's. But in the end, they have some intrinsic differences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart and Home

Before the Occupation, when Kira Meru is just a tiny girl, she wins a race on a neighbor's farm.

Her half-grown verdanis is a big, vain creature, and he prances and prances when they reach the finish line. She giggles uncontrollably when they get to the end, falling all over herself. She laughs so hard the farmer has to come over and help her off, grinning at her.

“On a verdanis you can outrun near enough anything,” he tells her. “If you want to.”

The long-limbed bird prances a little more, craning his long neck, than wanders away. Meru's daemon, Tyundu, watches it go with a wistful eye.

“Course,” the farmer adds, “that's most for show, the running. I mostly keep 'em for the feathers.”

* * *

 

At first, people laugh at the Cardassians.

“The Prophets will save us,” they say. “Look at these godless creatures, hissing and spitting like fiends. How can they hope to defeat us?”

But it isn't a defeat, in the end. Meru is young, but that much becomes clear. Bajorans laugh at first, but the laughing turns to uneasy mutters when the governmental leaders bow down, letting the Cardassians worm their way into Bajoran space. No one likes the Cardassians – the way they look down their noses at the Bajorans, waving their long, reptilian necks and scenting the air.

“Like they're looking for prey,” says Meru's mother once, and it seems all too apt a comparison.

Meru clutches her daemon to hide her face when Cardassians stomp by in the streets, always wearing their big boots, always laughing at her with their strange dry breath and snake-skin scent. Always, always going somewhere important. No one ever seems quite sure what the Cardassian business is on Bajor – not anyone Meru knows as a child, anyway – but it's bad.

And then one day, meetings are called all over the planet, all at once. The government leaders are silent. The Kai is gone. And the Cardassians come before the cities, and say, welcome us. We are here. We will be your salvation.

* * *

 

Meru runs for different reasons, after the Cardassians. There is little joy in the gray days that blur her middling years. But she continues to run, and she grows tall and lean, a knobby-kneed, sprawling girl who can dart off like a flash at the sound of combat boots. “A snake,” people predict of her, clucking their tongues and touching their ears in sorrow. Once, a snake daemon was not such a bad thing. That was before the Occupation.

And then one day she is running from a guard – nothing new, nothing extraordinary. Tyundu nips at her heels, giggling, as Meru dives and wiggles into a small crevice between two trees. The _glinn_ guard pursuing her stumbles past, cursing over brambles that catch at his feet.

She congratulates herself on being very clever indeed, and stretches out her feet. When she can no longer hear the guard, she pokes out her head -

“Freeze!”

\- and, without a sound, bolts.

But Meru is young, for all her years of running. She feels the guard gaining, hears the edge of his laughter on the wind. Her feet slap the dry ground, sending lances of pain up the soles of her feet, and she gasps for breath. She isn't going to make it. She isn't -

Then Tyundu shifts beside her, growing. Without a thought she throws herself onto the daemon's back, and the Cardassian screams with disappointment as they race away, her hand clutched in Tyundu's new feathers.

Slowly, Meru lowers her head, resting her cheek against her dear friend's neck. Her heart beat slows. Calms.

_Settles._

* * *

 

Meru marries a subdued man with a quiet hyurin daemon, small and meek. Not a strong choice. But a smart choice, because he is kind to her, and loves her, and because he knows to bow his head when the Cardassians snarl, which means he lives.

They have children, Reon and Pohl and a darling little girl, Nerys, who looks just like Meru. But it is hard, and harder all the time, to live under the Occupation. As time progresses Meru turns to her husband, Taban, and asks, “Were they kinder, when they first came to Bajor? Were there camps when the Cardassians came? I do not remember the camps.” But Taban looks at her blankly. He is younger than her, and he does not remember life before the Cardassians.

Sometimes, she pretends not to remember either. But at night she curls up with her children, her darling children, and tells them stories of the old days.

She thinks that Nerys and her little daemon, Suratal, are always the most eager listeners. Nerys, she decides, has a true creative spirit.

* * *

 

Many people come to regret the forms their daemons take. Souls who long to be brave want big, ferocious daemons that can protect them, and often get tiny rodents instead. Souls that are clumsy and want to be unnoticed get huge, lumbering livestock. But Meru loves, loves, loves her verdanis, right up until the Occupation, right up until the day the Cardassians come through her camp and tell the prettiest women to line up in a row.

It's hard to go unnoticed when you have a verdanis daemon. You stick out of the group immediately, is the thing. Meru is covered in a dozen layers of grime and dirt and dust, just like all the women around her. She's made basic attempts at self-hygiene – something her family and the families of women like hers will later mourn bitterly – but really it's hard to see her natural beauty at a glance. Fear, hunger and fatigue have leeched away her vigor and brightness, and she looks more prepared to enter a hospital than anything.

But her verdanis is sleek and strong and tall, and he stands out from all the other daemons. He is enough to earn her a second glance, a third, and once the Cardassians look closer they see what the environment has hidden. They see what a good bath and some feeding might unleash.

So they pick her. They take her.

And Kira Nerys never sees Meru again.

* * *

 

Things are hard, when Meru leaves. Nerys and her family receive better food, but it is difficult to understand the 'death' of a loved one. It is not the same as the death of a stranger, or corpses glimpsed in the night, quickly shielded from sight by Mother's protective hand. That is something distant, other – unrelated to Nerys's own life, and something she has always accepted.

But now Meru is gone, and Nerys is fascinated with death.

She is fascinated with death because it is an _easy_ interest, when it pervades the whole encampment. The dead and dying are everywhere, if one chooses to look as Nerys now does. She catalogs the protruding cheekbones of her starving neighbors, learns the wet cough of the truly ill. And she notes – must note - how the oily-skinned Cardassians never become afflicted by either. Because they, of course, have access to better resources. Because they _hoard_ their resources. She watches, and learns how the Cardassians steal from her people, brutalize them – sometimes outright, savagely kill them.

It makes her angry.

It makes her want to do something _back._

* * *

 

“Your mother sacrificed herself for us,” Taban tells Nerys. “She was the bravest woman I ever knew.”

Nerys does not remember her mother as she ages. She has a memory of hair like her own, soft strands glimmering red and bright against the drabness of the camp interior. She remembers gentle, smiling eyes that crinkled at the corners and a light voice telling her stories of the Prophets and before-times, times without Cardassians. Stories she loved and stories she cannot remember at all, except through vague, misty impressions.

But she remembers her mother's daemon. A verdanis daemon, huge and warm and imposing. Warm like her mother. And brave, she thinks privately. Surely braver than her father's tiny little rodent, though this is an unworthy thought; her father does the best he can.

Suratal tries to be a verdanis, but it makes Taban turn away when he does this. “We'll practice in private,” Suratal whispers, nudging Nerys in the side. And she nods.

There is a lot to practice, and many forms to perfect. The Cardassians make this necessary.

Pohl and Reon, her brothers, depend on Nerys to protect them. It doesn't matter that Pohl is only one year younger than Nerys, or that Reon is older. Their mother is dead. And Taban does what he can, but all the Bajorans can say the same, and still they are prisoners to the Cardassians.

'All they can' means very little, these days.

So Kira is the one to stroke her brothers' hair when they are afraid and wide-eyed at night, listening to the boots of Cardassian overseers walking by the camp. She stands in front of them during the workday, distracting attention when a _glinn_ is in a foul-temper. She is loud and bold and brash, and does it matter that she receives a slap or a beating, if her brothers do not?

“Of course it does,” says her father, helpless, when she says as much. “Of course it does, Nerys...”

“I can stand it better,” she says, and that is that.

She is quick, too. It makes her laugh to steal from the Cardassians; there is a petty delight in that.

“Ah, ah, they will never notice us,” Suratal murmurs.

The Alenis matriarch is ill. The theft of a simple emergency kit from one of the Cardassian tents will go a long way toward her recovery... but only if Nerys is quick, and silent.

“I could cause a distraction,” suggests Suratal, as Nerys glances around.

“No. I don't see anyone. Come on.”

She knows that the Cardassians have technologies that she doesn't comprehend. Bajorans – at least Bajorans in the Singha refugee camp - aren't usually permitted access to anything complex, so she isn't certain what sort of defenses might be lurking around the place. She sends in Suratal ahead of her as a barrowbug to be cautious.

He travels as far as he can, disappearing from her sight into the camp. Soon they both start to feel uncomfortable from the stretch of their bond. When he returns, he says, “No one is in. Go, quick.”

She scoops him up and moves.

The tent is large, and for Bajorans could house a few families; for the Cardassians, it is a temporary structure, and the entrance is pinned open. “This is how you attract predators,” she hears Suratal grumble softly as they slip inside, and the thought makes her smile.

She rifles around. It is tempting, so tempting, to steal more than what she came for. She does pocket some fruit from a nearby basket, but she only longingly eyes the disruptor lying in plain sight against the far wall. The disappearance of a medical bag will be received with lectures to the camp, and threats; the disappearance of a weapon could very well result in random killings as a show of force.

But...

Suratal shifts into a zhom pup. The wolfish canine looks between her and the weapon, eyes gleaming.

“Well?” he asks.

They _might_ not realize... They might not retaliate, and even if they do... wouldn't the chance be worth it, for a weapon like this? Wouldn't the possibility be worth it? Wouldn't it...

Suratal whines softly. Nerys finds and clutches the light green medical bag with its distinctive insignia, then looks at the disruptor.

Slowly, she starts forward...

“Don't move.”

She breathes in, sharply, and turns her head.

Gul Bronar's grip on his own disruptor is strong and sure. The alien, scaled feline daemon by his side hisses at Nerys. “Come with me,” he orders.

She does.

That day the Cardassians whip Nerys; and they whip three older women, too, chastising them for not watching the children of the camp properly. Her clothes are torn into strips; hot blood falls down to cake and dry on her back, stiffening into place. She aches with every pulse of her heart, and every ache reminds her that she lives.

Some people avert their eyes, when she limps back to her home that night. Others nod to her, in solidarity, and are wordless. They do not blame her. There is no point in blaming other Bajorans for anything.

Taban is waiting; he has heard the news, she realizes when she sees his pale face and shaking hands. Reon and Pohl are sitting nervously by his side; their father forgets them to run forward, hugging her to his brood chest.

Nerys leans forward, accepting the gesture, but does not return it.

“Nerys, Nerys. Are you alright?”

Suratal is a zhom again. He lets out a wolfish laugh.

“I suppose,” she says.

Nerys is glad that she never took the weapon, because she knows now, after the day's atrocities, that the fury of the Cardassians would have been unmatched.

She is also bitter; because, she should have took the weapon. If she had, perhaps she could have killed the gul who had entered the room and found her.

Taban looks at his daughter. “What are you thinking?” he wants to know.

She considers this. She is thinking many things.

Her daemon blinks up at her. His wolfish eyes gleam, then change, becoming small.

“We're not that great at going unnoticed,” Nerys sighs. Suratal crawls over her foot, mimicking the form of her father's hyurin.

Taban is quiet a moment, one hand touching her hair. “No,” he says finally. “No, you're not.”

* * *

 

Lupaza has warm eyes and red hair. When she reaches out a hand to pull Nerys from the crevice where she's been crouched, cramped and desperate, for nearly two days, the child's mouth forms the word, 'mother?'. But then she catches sight of Lupaza's daemon – a mature tokka - and the sight of the tracking-dog makes her heart sink. The word dies against her lips.

Lupaza tells her that the Cardassian who had been hunting her is dead; she does not ask Nerys why she was being hunted, and so Nerys does not tell her.

She does ask, “Is it safe for you to go back to your home?”

And Nerys, lying, says, “No.”

Because she knows that Taban will be worrying for her, and she knows her brothers are young and afraid and alarmed. She also knows that she has a bad mouth and a bad reputation, and she can't stay quiet forever. She is starting to bring them more trouble than protection. And she knows innately that this woman – this Lupaza – presents something. An opportunity.

So Lupaza looks her up and down, and says, “Come. We can shelter you for a few days.”

And Nerys follows.

* * *

 

If the camps were hard, the Shakaar resistance cell is full of grimmer people still. These Bajorans are outlaws in earnest. They live in the same atmosphere of constant fear as all of Bajor; but if found by Cardassian troops, they will be executed immediately with only the Cardassian's farcical notion of a trial as comfort.

They have little food – usually only what can be stolen or hunted. There are few to no comforts. But -

But there is freedom, too. Nerys watches one woman, Laren, smile and tell her friend an old legend of the Prophets that Nerys has never heard; it is a story that would earn a punishment, if Cardassians heard, but here people only smile. And there is laughter, quiet though it is, with no one to say that it is wrong to laugh.

Shakaar is strange. She does not know what to think of him. The woman seem to hang about his word, and she does not approve of this, this blind adoration. But he walks around the camp carefully, always a little more serious than the others, neck swaying from side to side as he watches and listens. A show of constant vigilance that is too practiced to be feigned, and too instinctual to be new, or even conscious. His zhom daemon has scraggly fur, and none of the attractive qualities of the man; but by strange contrast, the beast's eyes are warm. He cares for his people, she is certain of that. More, she can't yet say.

...She wants to stay.

Suratal has taken the form of a verrior – a small, color-shifting lizard. Lizard daemons are not popular these days; it gains them black looks when people notice. He rides her shoulder as Lupaza approaches. “A few of our people are going to be scouting out for supplies soon,” the woman tells her. “They're stopping by a village nearby at nightfall; we need to move soon, anyway. You can go with them and try and slip in.”

“I don't need to,” Nerys says.

“Excuse me?”

“I want to join you. The cell, I mean.”

Lupaza stares.

“You're just a child.”

“That doesn't mean anything to the Cardassians.”

“No,” says Lupaza, because it doesn't. “But it means something to us.”

“I can fight.”

“There's more to being in a cell than fighting. Can you think on your feet? Can you stand and keep moving if your partner falls? Can you leave someone behind, if you have to? Would you sacrifice yourself, if it came to it, for the good of Bajor?”

“Yes.”

Lupaza looks at her. Looks at her like Nerys hasn't thought of these things, already.

“...I need to talk to Shakaar,” she says.

“You do that.”

Everyone is against her, it seems, when Nerys' desire is known. But Shakaar is silent on the matter. He will say nothing. Finally, when everyone has argued and worried the issue between them, Lupaza asks, “What do you think, Shakaar?” and he says, “We shall see.”

So they give a chance, because Shakaar's word is law, though she doesn't much like this, either.

Eventually they do indeed move the cell. Lupaza stays with Nerys and guides her on how to move low and quick. There are scouts ahead and behind, and everyone is being cautious, but they could be seen by Cardassians anytime. Sensor equipment does not work in the Kola Mountains, but eyes still do.

The disruptor fire begins around noon.

“Get down!” The shouts come from all around. Lupaza shoves Kira down, and they scramble for cover behind the nearest outcropping of rock.

Kira has a small disruptor pistol of her own, an ancient piece of tech that is all the cell could afford to loan her. She twists the dial to 'kill' and peers around the rocks.

The Cardassians do not outnumber them; not even close. But they are fit and sleekly outfitted, healthy, bright-eyed. Under the harsh sun their scales shine. She can see the light reflecting from the spoons in their heads even from this distance.

Then, some start coming out from hiding places. Closer. Closer.

“Run,” yells Shakaar. And they do.

It is as organized a retreat as they can manage, with the group shooting over their shoulders to deter the Cardassians. But soon a horrible yipping starts. Two Cardassians have brought riding hounds with them, and they are leaping forward. Buying time. Trying to slow the cell enough to let the others catch up.

They shoot Laren in the shoulder, and she falls. The cell does not flinch, and continue their retreat. Then:

“Stand,” Shakaar says. “Here. Now.”

The cell obeys.

At first, Nerys is angry. Why is he giving up? What is he trying to accomplish?

In a rush, though, she sees their position; suddenly on higher, level ground, with a steep slope before them where the Cardassians must rush them. Defensible.

Her hands are trembling.

“Easy,” Lupaza says.

When the full force of the Cardassians arrive, it is a gruesome fight. The Cardassians surely cannot win; they fight, anyway, and she sees confidence in them. And despite their losses, they do damage that cannot be undone. Two more Bajorans fall – no, three. They do not rise again.

Then, one of the Cardassians turns toward Lupaza and Nerys. His limping riding hound snarls from one side, a nearly identical daemon growling on the other.

Nerys shoots; but her pistol sputters, and dies, and does nothing.

Lupaza is turned away when the hound leaps for her; Nerys throws away the useless disruptor and lunges.

She goes down in a snarl of blood and ruined flash, grappling with the beast's bony limbs. Teeth flash by her ear. Suratal is screaming near her neck. Nerys twists up and _pushes_ , kicks, then rolls over. She shoves the muzzle of the hound up with her arm, and bites a flailing leg that comes in front of her mouth. She hears a high-pitched squeal.

She takes hold of the hound's ruff,and digs through fur to find his neck. She starts to squeeze.

“No!”

She looks up.

The Cardassian is coming for her, his daemon caught in another fight. For a moment her heart leaps, and she wonders what to do.

Just a moment.

Suratal wiggles away, and then suddenly he's shifting, merging, changing. He soars through the air, screaming his fury through the wind, and rears his talons back. The Cardassian cries as his eyes are ripped out, clasping his head. Blood streams down his face.

And Nerys turns away, already preoccupied with more important things.

When the hound is dead she turns from the weeping blind man and moves to another Cardassian who is harassing a fellow rebel. She leaps on him from the back, and her blood sings when Suratal tears at his daemon from above.

The battle is over soon. It stops very suddenly; one moment, she is beating the shoulders of a Cardassian and shoving him into the dirt; the next, there are no enemies left. There are two prisoners – one Cardassian with a broken leg, and the man Suratal maimed. Everyone else is either dead or has fled.

There is no time for more than perfunctory grief. The bodies must be hidden, the sight of the battle obliterated. They must flee this place before reinforcements come. But as they ready themselves to leave, Lupaza comes to Nerys. “Your daemon touched a man,” she says. “He touched a man in violence.”

Nerys nods. “Yes.”

“And he knew what he was doing?”

“He would have killed that Cardassian, if he could have.”

And Lupaza seems to think about this as they walk.

When they return to camp, the deeds of Nerys are discussed. Because she cannot, surely, be a probationary member any more... not now. Not after this.

And anyway, she is no longer a child, is she? “Her daemon is settled, after all,” they say. And Nerys looks at Suratal, surprised to find that they are right – and she has not even noticed.

“Didn't I say?” Lupaza asks them. “Didn't I say? Look – she has the heart of a sinoraptor.”

And so it is. Kira Nerys is a girl-child of twelve, fighting a war before her time, but from that day people look at her and say, “She is a warrior. A warrior. Look. She has the heart of a sinoraptor.”

Many of them call her 'Kira' now, because she is a soldier and because soldiers are called by their last names. And also because, she knows, it distances people to do this, and it is good to be distant with those who are going to die.

* * *

 

Kira grows to love Shakaar. His eyes follow her, as she grows older and her body becomes taller, but she does nothing. There is a war, after all. What time does she have for love, and what good would it do, to distract such a good leader with her own life?

He is a good leader, at least. She has seen that. Sometimes it does not seem like it – sometimes when the food becomes short, and tempers shorter, and Shakaar disappears in a tent with a few women for 'warmth'. But she learns, eventually, this: he is just a mortal, like them all. He is frail, and flawed. And he is frightened.

She cannot fault him, or anyone, for that.

* * *

 

The Haru outpost has supplies vital to the cell. Not weaponry, though she would like to retrieve that, too. Not medicine, although that never hurts.

Food. Clean water, and filters. This is all she needs.

When she presses her body against the wall, tilting back her head so her breaths are thin and quiet, she can feel the bones of her ribs pressing against the fabric of her shirt. Above her, between the buildings and fences, the sky is black and stars gleam brightly. She could lose herself, watching those stars.

“You're going to get shot if you don't move,” Suratal mutters in her ear.

He's a little big, to be perched on her shoulder. That's fine; his weight makes her stronger. She shakes herself. “Come on. The signal will come soon.”

There are three different storage units around the outpost. She and two others have actually been sent to get inside the perimeter. Outside, an attack should be coming to serve as a distraction any moment now...

Someone screams.

Someone _inside_ the outpost.

Kira swears. She fumbles for her communicator. “Abort mission!” she snaps. “Retreat!”

She hears the crunch of boots, garbled shouts in Cardassi. She wavers. Run – help – or -

A disruptor blast flares past her ear. Run, then.

She turns and starts to sprint, pumping her legs. She weaves and ducks as another flare briefly illuminates her surroundings. Suratal takes off, wheeling through the sky and screeching his displeasure.

“I'll take care of this,” he says.

She doesn't argue.

The shots stop abruptly; screams come, instead, and as she runs and the daemon-bond stretches and aches she can hear the distant flapping of wings against flesh. It grows faint behind her, and Kira's breathing grows labored.

She runs, still. She meets the other rebel – the survivor – and they flee together.

They arrive together back at camp, grimy, exhausted and defeated as dawn approaches. They will try again another day. Shakaar debriefs them as the cell readies for yet another move. He looks Kira up and down, and asks, “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“You're certain?”

“I'm sure.”

He trusts her word – it is a foolish thing, to hide injuries that could fester. So they continue to speak for awhile. But abruptly he pauses, and a strange look comes to his eyes. “Kira,” he says slowly. “...Where is Suratal?”

She sucks in a slow breath, and says nothing.

Suratal returns to camp hours later, his wings ruffled and bent. Kira holds him close to her, silently, and everyone looks away.

Shakaar looks at her differently, after that, and she tries not be bitter about the fact that she is now so useful to him in a way that no one really wants to be.

* * *

 

“You were meant to be a verdanis,” she says one day. “Like my mother's daemon. She was the bravest woman in the world.”

Suratal stretches his talons. “We can be brave, too, can't we?”

Kira draws up her knees, and thinks of all the people she has left behind. “...Oh, I hope so.”

* * *

 

Kira is smuggled onto Terok Nor, the space-station outpost above Bajor, to retrieve a list of Bajoran collaborators. It is a task which troubles her deeply.

In her experience Bajorans help Bajorans. There are many evils in life, but that is a known truth: Bajorans are friends, if they can be; the Cardassians are enemies. Always.

The Cardassians are enemies, still, she consoles herself. The collaborators are cowards – but at least not deliberately evil. It is not quite a comfort. But it is something.

The... entity... called Odo is not a Cardassian or a Bajoran, though. She doesn't know how to classify him. It seems no one else does, either. Initially she wants to think he is an enemy – he is, after all, investigating for the Cardassians – but Bajorans on the station seem to trust him reasonably well. He was Bajoran-raised, she understands. When they first meet, he says, “I don't choose sides,” but sometimes he helps them. And this puzzles her.

One day she hears about how Odo has caught a child named Relan stealing from the quarters of a gul... caught him, and let him go.

He seems actively confused when she tries to ask him about this.

“...You don't even know his name, do you?”

“I'm here to carry out justice,” Odo replies. “ - Not necessarily Cardassian justice. Or Bajoran, for that matter.”

Kira stares at him awhile. A smile starts to appear. “So you think you're the law?”

“Someone should be.”

Suratal whistles and chirrups. He seems thoughtful. “I don't think the Cardassians are going to go for that,” Kira says. “And what gives you the right, anyway?”

“What gives them the right?”

The smile fades from her lips.

“...Well,” Kira says. “I guess I can't argue with that, can I?”

* * *

 

The Cardassians are leaving.

Kira has been made a Major, by a 'provisional government'.

...Provisional.

That is an important word. Provisional.

An agreement has been made. The United Federation of Planets is coming to 'assist' Bajor, so they say, full of sympathy and concern. Even this station, Terok Nor, will be run by a Federation Commander, and called by a Federation name – Deep Space Nine. Some people call this liberation. Kira does not call trading one form of oppression for another, 'freedom'.

“You worry too much,” says Odo, who can shapeshift and leave this place whenever he likes, if only he would. Who has no species, no attachments, no home.

“Do you trust them?” She asks.

His silence is answer enough.

But Kira is going to be on Terok Nor – 'Deep Space Nine' – for a long time. She will see what this Federation has to offer. She will learn, and decide for herself.

When the ship that carries the Federation officers comes, she stands by the windows and watches them come in. She cradles Suratal to her chest, bowing her head. “Do you think,” she whispers, only for his hearing, “that we'll have to flee again? Or fight them?” she looks up. The ship is large. Gleaming. Powerful. “...Do you think we'll never have our own home?”

“Or maybe,” Suratal murmurs sleepily, picking at her hair, “We could stay, and build a proper nest?”

...Kira strokes his feathers, and stares at the approaching ship. “Well,” she says. “I guess we'll see, won't we?”

 

 


End file.
